Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

In football as in politics, the Lib Dems have a losing policy

The Liberal Democrats now have an official party policy that football clubs wanting to win is a cause for concern. The party’s conference has just approved a motion, which Coffee House reported on yesterday, complaining that ‘winning has become the primary motive in the sport’ and about an ‘influx of overseas investment’. The motion was amended slightly, though the gist is the same: Party policy now says that winning in football is a dangerous thing. Jeremy Browne must be thrilled. Some speakers in the debate were a little worried about how this must look to anyone else watching – or indeed to many people in the party who had a good think about

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems to announce mental health policy ‘red line’

The Lib Dems haven’t really announced many enormous policies so far at their party conference. Yesterday’s speech from Vince Cable was more notable for its loyalty than it was for its focus on ‘bolstering’ apprenticeship pay and ‘clarifying’ and ‘enhancing’ workers’ rights. But unless they’re planning to go for the 2013 Tory strategy of not announcing something in their leader’s speech and then cobbling together an announcement from one throwaway line when they realise the newspapers might not write anything up at all, the Lib Dems do still plan to use Clegg’s speech to announce something important. Based on what Norman Lamb had to say yesterday at fringe meetings, it

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Danny Alexander indicates that the Lib Dems wants £5 billion in tax rises

In a sign of his enhanced status in the party, Danny Alexander has been one of the main attractions on the conference fringe this year. This evening, it was standing room only when he was interviewed by The Independent’s Steve Richards. Alexander was on feisty form. He declared that ‘both the other parties are pretty useless’ and that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done a bloody good job for this country’. Marking his own homework, he gave the party 10 out of 10 for being credible and effective. But he said that the Lib Dems had to shout louder to get their share of the credit for the economic recovery. He

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems aren’t haranguing Nick Clegg. Makes a change

In the past few years, Nick Clegg has come to blows with his party activists at his annual conference question-and-answer session over the policies his party has had to support while in government. The Deputy Prime Minister has, at times, grown rather grumpy as the grassroots harangue him on issues they wish he’d show more of a backbone on. But he’s just emerged from today’s Q&A entirely unscathed. The only point of difference was over assisted dying, which is a free vote for MPs anyway, and which Clegg disagrees with. But the Deputy Prime Minister didn’t even need to defend what his party did to activists. There are a number

Steerpike Steerpike

The Clegg catwalk: DPM takes a page from David Cameron’s style guide

What exactly is going on with Nick Clegg’s conference get-up in Glasgow? As of this writing, the Deputy Prime Minister is wearing his third outfit of the day — casual jeans and a dark shirt. Mr S is sure he’s seen something similar to this hideous apparel somewhere before. Given the Liberal Democrats are spending this week laying into the Tories as part of the differentiation strategy from their coalition parties, was it really wise for their leader to dress up in his own version of David Cameron’s much lampooned holiday gear? It’s clear the Liberal Democrats are asking for a lot to remain in the Coalition, but isn’t the shirt off of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Vince Cable accuses George Osborne of lying about tax rises

Vince Cable’s speech today was loyal and funny. Cable was, unlike in some previous years, very much on message. He lavished praise on Clegg for having turned the Liberal Democrats into a party of government. He ended his speech by telling the activists that ‘there is a lot to be proud of and we must be proud of it’ to the delight of Nick Clegg, who was rather distractingly wearing jeans in the conference hall. Cable also attacked both the Tories and Labour. He joked that the Tories were turning into Ukip without the beer and Labour into Hollande-style socialists but without the sex. The most aggressive part of his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Who would the Lib Dems really prefer to work with?

Though they didn’t call them ‘red lines’, the Liberal Democrats did spend yesterday making clear the things they won’t accept if they have to work with the Tories in another coalition after the 2015 general election. Today’s Financial Times sets out a line that the party is apparently happy to cross: the EU referendum that the Tories have promised as their own ‘red line’. Listening to Nick Clegg huff and puff his way through the Today programme, you’d have been forgiven for thinking he was a bit annoyed that he was being asked once again about his party’s own position on a referendum: inconveniently, it was suggested that this wasn’t

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lynne Featherstone: I’d like to shoot the Lib Dem Coalition Negotiating Team

The Lib Dems leadership might have hoped that it had moved on from tuition fees. But tonight’s League of Young Voters fringe was dominated by the topic. Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Minister, says that she would like to shoot the Lib Dem negotiating team for not making the issue a red line in the coalition negotiations. Quite what her Lib Dem ministerial colleagues who were on that team—Danny Alexander and David Laws—will make of that remains to be seen. Tim Farron, the party president, was more judicious in his language. But he did say that the negotiating team should have realised that the electorate’s sense of what the party’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Danny Alexander rolls up his sleeves to attack the Tories

Danny Alexander clearly wanted to come across as casual and jovial for his speech to the Lib Dem conference. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His top button wasn’t done up. Neither were his cuffs because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had, after years of politicians using it as a figure of speech, rolled up his sleeves. This sort of sartorial shift normally gets written up as a politician ‘on manoeuvres’, and Alexander did seem keen to appear a little different, a little more human, this time round. He even told the audience at one point that he was saying something ‘with all my heart’. He had, though, scripted part

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems swear to get attention – but what about their policies?

The Lib Dems are in an amusingly sweary mood this weekend at their conference, with Danny Alexander telling the Sun on Sunday that he’s p****d off with the Tories for stealing his tax policy, and Lord Ashdown talking about shits and bastards last night. Vince Cable today promised ‘more colourful language’ about his coalition partners in the speech that he will give later in the conference. Perhaps Nick Clegg is planning to develop his ‘No, no, no’ speech from last year to tell delegates about all the times he’s had to tell the Tories to eff off in the past four years, though he seems oddly delicate about return fire,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why every Tory should wish the Liberal Democrats a successful conference

Every Conservative should wish the Liberal Democrats a successful conference in Glasgow this week and not from any misplaced sense of coalition loyalty. The poor souls are on a pathetic 7 per cent in the polls, against 23 per cent in the general election. The Tories’ embrace has proven toxic for them. Yes, it was daft of Nick Clegg to agree to the (absurd) Tory ring fencing of health at the expense of his tuition fees pledge – and yes, he has paid the price for this historic misjudgement. Did he think people would ever forget his making promises like this one? But no Tory can be happy that he has

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg attacks ‘economically extreme’ Tories

The Lib Dem message in Glasgow this week in simple, you can’t trust either Labour or the Tories to run the country on their own. On Marr this morning, Nick Clegg said that the country was being offered a ‘dismal choice’ between ‘sticking your head in the sand’ with Labour or ‘beating up on the poor’ with the Tories. Clegg was determined to get his anti-Tory lines out there. He accused George Osborne of a plan to ‘savage unprotected public services’ and again and again attacked the Tories for being ‘economically extreme’ and supposedly wanting to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. He also drew another red

Saturday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Nick Clegg cheers activists before starting the trickier work

Lib Dem conference rallies are always a little like spending Christmas with a family you don’t know: quite baffling but rather endearing. There’s the uncle who tells the same jokes every year (Paddy Ashdown, telling the conference that he’d been asked in the street by a ‘little man’ whether he ‘used to be Paddy Ashdown’ – mercifully the members found it hilarious, again), some confusing singing (an award-winning a cappella group who kept the delegates giggling by singing ‘stuck in the middle’), a bit of sweariness (Ashdown, again, claiming the Libs were ‘too nice’ and didn’t have any ‘proper shits’) and things that just don’t make sense unless you’re part

Nick Faith

The Conservatives need to win in Cities. Here’s how they can

The Conservatives do not have a problem in the North. As Policy Exchange’s report, Northern Lights, highlighted if you took the TransPennine Express train from Liverpool to Newcastle you would find that 13 of the stops are in Conservative held seats and 19 in seats held by Labour. The Tories’ real problem is in attracting support from urban voters, especially those living in inner city areas. To put this into context the party does not have a single councillor in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield. Twenty out of London’s 32 boroughs are held by Labour. Just nine are Conservative. Yet Boris Johnson has won two consecutive Mayoral contests. So it can be done.

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

MC Dave and post-modern politics

After David Cameron’s conference speech, Mr S noticed a YouTube video of the Prime Minister all over Facebook and Twitter. For a moment it looked like a great coup for Cameron. Except the video wasn’t showing Cameron’s actual speech but rather a ‘comic’ hip-hop mashup of his words. It features the Prime Minister’s Home Counties accent rapping the lines ‘I’m hardcore/I know the score/and I’m disgusted with the poor’ to the bouncy beat of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’. Strong flow and excellent lyricism from MC Dave but sadly not the election winning stuff that he hoped for. Cassetteboy’s ‘Cameron Conference Rap’ video has racked up two million views in only 3 days.

Guglielmo Verdirame

Why Britain should scrap the Human Rights Act

Will the scrapping of the Human Rights Act make Britain a pariah in Europe? When the Human Rights Act was passed in 1998, it was presented as a moment of great liberal modernization that was to take Britain closer to liberal democracies on the continent. Yet, the European experience was quite different. In Germany, France, Spain or Italy, if you bring a human rights case, you do so mainly by reference to the distinctive bill of rights contained in each of those countries’ constitutions. The Norwegians, who also reviewed their human rights legislation recently, were clear on one thing: their Supreme Court had to continue to decide human rights cases

Rob Hutton

The Only Political Speech You’ll Ever Need To Read

Political summer holidays aren’t all about body-boarding and pointing at fish for the cameras. For most in the front rank of British public life, their fortnight in the sun is when they begin the work of drafting the Big Conference Speech. It’s important to them because, despite the many ways politics has changed with television and the internet, no one is considered leadership material unless they can successfully deliver a 50-minute speech to a roomful of supporters. The speech, reporters are always told in advance, is ‘their most personal yet’, probably because ‘they wrote most of it themselves’. If the message is ‘Serious Leader, Serious Times’, it will be delivered

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Chris Grayling is an advertisement for a Labour government

Thank heavens for Ed Miliband, eh? The leader of the opposition remains the single most compelling reason to hope the Conservatives remain in power next May. A shame, then, that cabinet ministers appear determined to promote the idea that a Labour victory would be garlanded with at least some silver promise. Chiefly, Chris Grayling would no longer serve as Justice Secretary. This is a non-trivial consideration that’s worth pondering before anyone casts their ballot next May. There is some dispute over whether the Conservative’s plans to rewrite Britain’s human rights legislation can really deliver all they promise; some disagreement, therefore, over whether they’re as dangerous as they initially appear. Is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why David Cameron’s tax reform won’t break the bank

It’s odd to see David Cameron’s tax pledge being denounced as profligate, even in publications like the Financial Times. The Prime Minister has always been a moderate on tax, and remains one now. He has astutely positioned his promise to rise the 40p threshold as a giveaway, which makes sense politically. But the truth is a little more complex, and I look at it in my Daily Telegraph column today. Under Labour, every year was a ‘giveaway’ insofar as tax thresholds increased with RPI inflation. David Cameron has, in effect, decided to bring back this policy. If this is a craven tax bribe for Middle England then it is one that Blair

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

People trust the Tories with their money – that’s why they can promise unfunded tax cuts

Does it matter that the Tories can’t spell out how they’d fund the tax cuts they announced at their party conference this week? Labour has launched a clock which monitors how long it’s been since David Cameron promised these cuts without any detail on how they’d pay for them. But last night on BBC This Week, Tom Watson summed up why the Tories feel they can make this attack: ‘I don’t think we can be more austere than the Tories now: I thought those freezes were cruel last week and will have very bad social consequences and the Labour party doesn’t believe in that, and so we’ve got to make